First Contact
by bhut
Summary: Stargate tries to establish contact with Cross Photonics. It doesn't go well.


**First Contact**

_Disclaimer: none of these characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners._

"Remind me, why did we have to come to West Coast – to _Canadian_ West Coast of all places?" Jack O'Neill grumbled, as he turned to his number one friend and subordinate, Samantha "Sam" Carter. "I mean – yes, it's a nicer place than our home base, even in autumn, for I'm not talking about winter, but beyond that-"

"Jack, listen," Samantha sighed in exasperation. "Our intelligence has been receiving reports about some sort of _spontaneously_ generated holes in time and space all over the world, but primarily in Great Britain. Sadly, after a certain series of misunderstandings-"

"There were no misunderstandings, Sam," O'Neill said with finality. "I fully meant what I said. The Russians – they don't really pretend to be anything else but what they are – the Brits, they put on airs and make you indebted to them to your ears and nose, even if it's you who are initially doing them a favor-"

"Of all the times for you to start listening to your inner Irishman it was back then?" Carter said in exasperation.

"I couldn't help it – few minutes with that Lester fellow and his pet soldier, and-"

"Captain Becker is no one's 'pet', Jack-"

"I've seen men like these, Sam – ex-soldiers, broken on the field of battle, sticking to what pieces they have left, until everything is gone-"

"OK, Jack, let me make myself clear," Samantha said firmly. "This part of Canada appears to be experiencing the same phenomena as Britain does, and we really need to acquire a better grip of knowledge of these holes, or time anomalies as they're called. Therefore, you're going to be diplomatic, yes?"

"Fine, I will," O'Neill said crossly. "And I believe that the welcoming team is here. I will go and get Teal'c and others while you greet them." And he turned around and left.

Sam suppressed the urge to stick her tongue at him, and instead turned to the approaching woman with a warm but professional smile (hopefully). "Hello. Are you from Cross Photonics?" she said brightly. "We're the people you're supposed to meet. I am lieutenant colonel Carter-"

"Yes, I see that you're the US Army people that got Leeds and his superiors so worked up," the other woman nodded. "I'm Angelika Finch; sadly, Evan Cross couldn't be here – he and Dylan Weir have a number of work-related problems that are keeping them away-"

"I see," Carter noticed, failing to realize just why the other woman had stopped talking, but then again, her attention was on the rest of her crew. "And here were have colonel O'Neill, Daniel Jackson-"

"Just Daniel is fine," the Egyptologist said in his usual manner, ignoring Samantha's glare at his interruption.

"-Teal'c, and-"

"Vala Mal Dorn," Angelika Finch said with much more emotion than Carter would have expected. "I swear that the next time we've met I'll kill you!"

"A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha," the alien laughed in a totally fake way. "Nice to see you too, lady Ishtar!"

"I prefer – Inanna," the Cross Photonics representative said calmly, "but that is besides the matter."

"Then what _is_ the matter?" Daniel blinked.

"Basically? In the ages past she had robbed of what amounts in US dollars to be thirteen thousand of them. That and she had humiliated me to such an extent that that boor Apophis and the others were able to push through their plan with Egypt! I mean seriously, Egypt! It was a cultural cul-de-sac – neither African nor Asian nor European-"

"Excuse me," O'Neill said quietly. "Are you a Goa'Uld?"

"Hmm? I was lady Ishtar, or Inanna, of Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylonia, but now I'm a CFO instead – this hands-on approach has really paid off, though in case of Vala Mal Dorn-"

"I'm fixing this financial misunderstanding as quickly as I can!" the latter cried quickly from a corner, where a number of banking machines was located.

"Vala, you aren't doing anything if there's money _and_ Goa'Uld involved," O'Neill said firmly. "And as for you," he turned back to the Goa'Uld CFO, "you are going to answer some questions-"

"Oh really?" the latter smoothly raised one eyebrow. "I don't think so."

She took of her shoes and began to dance. For a while O'Neill and others looked at her in confusion, and then something burst inside their skulls and they literally blacked out...

/

"What has happened?" O'Neill asked some time later. He and the others were sitting in a plane, it seemed – a _flying_ plane, too. "Did we just all faint?"

"No, Lady Ishtar had danced a dance that creates an orgasm so powerful that it overrides all other body motions, causing it to temporarily shut down," Teal'c said in his matter-of-fact manner. "That what had happened to you. In my case, of course, the symbiont helped me to resist and Vala was purposefully not affected."

"So what, we had orgasms and shut down?" O'Neill tried to make sense – he was not doing a very good job on it.

"Yes. We had to replace them, after Vala paid lady Ishtar all that she owed her from her past heist," Teal'c nodded. "She helped, though, and a team of our people is allowed to work with the Canadians – just not any of you. Apparently the Canadians for some reason think that you are some sort of irresponsible party people that got their job through nepotism – you really should not have gotten into lady Ishtar's face: she was rumored to be vengeful, after all. Not fancy, just vengeful."

As Jack was thinking this over, slowly, for his body was still not up to doing anything fast, something caught Samantha Carter's attention. "Paid her? How much?" she insisted of Vala.

"Hm. Oh, here's the receipt," Vala said absent-mindedly, deep in her own thoughts. "Or is it the bill? Daniel says that I'm confusing the two..."

Samantha took the piece of paper. And stared. "You've paid this CFO of a hooker-wannabee _how much_?" she yelled.

"What?" Vala was shaken out of her thoughts and took a second look. "What? Oh no, sorry. This is the bill of Daniel's latest mass order of sprats that he likes to eat. Personally, I think that they upset his body humors and makes his orifices smell funny – but we are working on it. This is what I paid back lady Ishtar."

There was a pause as O'Neill and Carter stared at the _second_ receipt. "Seriously?" Jack O'Neill glared at the younger man. "You're spending more on some European – or Baltic – canned fish than what Vala had lifted from a Goa'Uld noble in a heist?"

"They're actually cheaper in bulk," Daniel Jackson said unwisely.

O'Neill blew his topic.

"We can travel to other planets, or even galaxies, without any problem, solve _massive_ crises and regularly save the world," Carter sighed as she spoke to Teal'c, "yet when we simply go to another country – a _friendly_ country, even, we seem to fail instead. How does the universe work?"

Teal'c just shrugged.

End


End file.
